For Basic Disks and Dynamic Disks, they have their own differences and similarity. Here is a complete article to compare them through several aspects on: http://www.dynamic-disk.com/difference-between-basic-and-dynamic-disk.html

Li9/23/2009 8:00:05 PM

I have been testing the use of hardware snapshot technology (EMC SnapView for CLARiiON in this instance) and have found Windows dynamic disk to be very problematic. The snapshot technology works fine - however, if one intends to import snapshots (or clones) into a secondary host to create test servers or to offload backup processing from a primary host, then lots of luck! The issue seems to be that Windows doesn't like moving dynamic disks from one server to another - which is what you effectively do when carting snaps or clones to another host. I can get a dynamic disk clone or snap into a secondary host - but it takes at least one, and sometimes multiple reboots of the second host to make this work. Not really practical for a production environment. My testing with basic disk works fine both in creating snaps and in importing them to secondary hosts. Also, for EMC Clariion storage, I can use metaluns at the array side and expand a BASIC disk endlessly and on the fly without host or application disruption to increase capacity using the 'diskpart' CLI tool from MS.. This works as well with dynamic disk and metaluns. As was stated in the original article - allow the hardware vendor to handle the RAID. If you do this, then what is the point of dynamic disk?

steve4/5/2005 4:04:57 PM

To Sum it up? If I am reading all of this correctly and from other sites...if I set my 3 disc raid 5 to dynamic and since the volume info is kept on the system portion, am I SOL if the system drive gets corupt? That is to say...the info stored on the volume? Not true. It keeps the database on the disks themselves. I have a hardware raid 5 array that is dynamic and it's been pulled from server to server in our R&D lab many times and all you have to do is select import disk to access the data on any computer running a supported OS.

Anonymous User 3/19/2005 11:42:19 PM

Excellent article, I am well versed with hardware mirroring, but this writing puts what MS did in very good perspective. Thx....

Anonymous User 2/21/2005 8:41:54 PM

Excellent article, I am well versed with hardware mirroring, but this writing puts what MS did in very good perspective. Thx....

Anonymous User 2/21/2005 8:41:54 PM

Excellent article, I am well versed with hardware mirroring, but this writing puts what MS did in very good perspective. Thx....

Anonymous User 2/21/2005 8:41:54 PM

Excellent article, I am well versed with hardware mirroring, but this writing puts what MS did in very good perspective. Thx....

Anonymous User 2/21/2005 8:41:54 PM

Excellent article, I am well versed with hardware mirroring, but this writing puts what MS did in very good perspective. Thx....

Anonymous User 2/21/2005 8:41:54 PM

This is very helpfully

Anonymous User 2/1/2005 8:48:02 AM

To Sum it up?
If I am reading all of this correctly and from other sites...if I set my 3 disc raid 5 to dynamic and since the volume info is kept on the system portion, am I SOL if the system drive gets corupt? That is to say...the info stored on the volume?

Anonymous User 1/20/2005 2:36:00 PM